


Butterflies in the Garden

by ChronicCombustion



Category: Persona 4, Persona 5
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Flowers, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Written for the Fools In Love! Persona fan zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25523578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicCombustion/pseuds/ChronicCombustion
Summary: Your name is Souji Seta, and you do not have a soulmate.
Relationships: Amamiya Ren/Narukami Yu, Amamiya Ren/Seta Souji, Kurusu Akira/Narukami Yu, Kurusu Akira/Seta Souji
Comments: 9
Kudos: 89





	Butterflies in the Garden

**Author's Note:**

> Last year I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of the writers in the **Fools In Love! Persona Fan Zine** , and while there were a few delays (for various reasons) we have just been given the all clear to post our finished pieces! :D
> 
> And so, at long last, I present to you my very first SouKira (PegoBan) fic~ For anyone interested in the flower symbolism, I've listed all the flower meanings down in the end notes.
> 
> (Also, if you'd like a full list of the zine's contributors and their pieces, you can find it on twitter **@foolsinlovezine** )

Your name is Souji Seta, and you do not have a soulmate.

Even as a child, when your classmates started sprouting colors, Lover’s Marks around their wrists, Platonic Marks across their backs, your skin has always been blank. You used to watch the other children as they gleefully showed off their growing ink and giggled over whose Marks might match their own. You envied them at first. Now you just feel numb.

Over time you’ve come to accept your Mark-less existence. You don’t _like_ it, you don’t _want_ it, but a lifetime of changing schools and absent parents means you’re no stranger to being alone. Eventually you just stop caring. At least, you _tell_ yourself you’ve stopped caring; it’s easier than facing the gaping void of loneliness threatening to choke you whenever your guard is down.

 _Maybe this is better_ , you think. Maybe your lack of Soul Marks is the universe’s way of helping you deal with the isolation in your everyday life.

(You chant your “maybe’s” in your head and stop crying yourself to sleep by the time you reach age 9.)

\---

Your flowers finally bloom when you turn 16.

A year is spent in a rural town called Inaba, where, for the first time in your existence, you actually feel _alive._ There are murders, a mystery, but in between the stress and combat there are _people_ , and as you slowly get to know them you can feel your garden grow.

They start as tingles across your shoulder blades, the sensation of warm water spreading like ink along your skin. You wake one morning to find stems and buds. You wake the next to petals and leaves. Sunflowers for the Magician, hyacinth and amaryllis for the Chariot and Priestess. Gladiolus, then pink roses; lilac, then iris. There is freesia for your cousin, a dahlia for her dad. An entire field of Platonic Marks springs up almost overnight, and little by little they bury the emptiness beneath vibrant shades of love until you’re covered neck to waist in watercolor blooms.

But for all the tattooed beauty of the flowers on your back there is still a blank spot on your canvas, and the colors fade in sadness on the day you have to leave.

\---

You stop dreaming about the Velvet Room when you move back to Tokyo. You miss it, the way you miss everything else about Inaba, but your contract has been fulfilled and the logical part of you knows you have to readjust to life as a normal person. It takes _ages_ , but you begrudgingly fall back into your boring, lonely life. You clutch at your shoulders when it gets to be unbearable; when texts and calls to your garden of friends just aren’t enough, you find your fingers searching out the comfort of the blossoms on your back.

Months pass by the time you’ve finally accepted that you’ll never see the liminal blue dreamscape again, and it’s because of this that you’re so completely unprepared for the night when, out of absolutely nowhere, you feel that familiar sensation of falling just as you’re drifting asleep.

“ _Honored friend,”_ comes the silvery-sweet voice of Margaret in your ear. _“May I ask a personal favor?”_

You do not hesitate, you simply tell her, “yes.”

The world around you is cold and harsh when feeling returns to your body. You open your eyes to find yourself in a… _cage?_ Stumbling to the bars, you look out into the blue-tinted room beyond your cramped enclosure and realize that you are not in a cage, but a _prison._

The walls curve away from you in a circle of cells too dark to see inside, but from what you can tell, the center of the space is empty.

Someone lurks behind you in the dark; you do not need to turn to know who it is. “There is something wrong with the Velvet Room,” Margaret whispers over your shoulder. “I cannot seem to contact my Master and I fear this new guest may be in danger.” You hear her move, hear the creak of her Compendium as it opens.

Faintly, from all the way across the room in the cell directly opposite yours, there comes the sound of rustling chains. Instinctively you step back into the safety of the shadows as a figure, clad in white-and-black prison garb, shuffles up to the bars of that distant cell. You cannot make out features, only the monochrome of skin and charcoal hair.

“Hello?” the figure calls, and the voice is male.

“Hello?!” he calls more insistently, voice hitching in building unease. “Is anyone there?”

You don’t like this. You don’t like what the Velvet Room’s become and you don’t like that there’s a boy in _chains_ across from you in the empty dark. “Let me help,” you whisper, eyeing the oppressive space around you with creeping dread. “This isn’t right, let me help.”

You practically _feel_ Margaret’s smile. “I was hoping you’d offer.” The Compendium snaps shut.

Something rises from your soul: an old, familiar presence that you nearly weep to feel again, lightning-charged and sizzling through your veins like a pulse. There’s a surge of ethereal blue light and past the glow, through a pair of eyes not _quite_ your own, you see the boy in the other cell take a step backwards in shock.

When the light dims, Izanagi stands triumphant in the center of the room.

Through your Persona’s vision you see the boy more clearly. He’s roughly your age, with curling black hair and wide dark eyes set in a beautiful, seraphim face. He stares up at you-not-you in fear and awe and somewhere in the back of your head you hear Izanagi’s voice like a rumbling, distant storm.

_**I am thou.** _

_**But thou are not I.** _

The boy’s bow furrows in frustrated confusion. “I don’t understand.”

You watch through Izanagi’s eyes as he silently appraises the boy in the cell. Eventually you feel him nod.

_**You’ll do.** _

The world glows white-hot.

There’s a sensation of something shifting – _relocating_ – and suddenly you’re blind. In place of your sight, however, comes an acute awareness of someone else, like your awareness of Margaret behind you only stronger, _deeper,_ like you’re somehow folded up in another person and they in you. Any hollow place that once existed within you is gone, filled to the brim with this feeling of _him_ , the boy who now holds the most profound piece of your soul.

It’s the most intimate thing you’ve ever felt in your _life_ and you are very nearly brought to tears.

Your vision fades back in, leaving you once more inside your own body, and from across the way you can see the boy staring at his hands in pure wonder. He flexes his fingers, brings them up to press against his chest as if he’s feeling for something past his sternum. He looks up, and those dark, wide eyes meet yours.

“Who are you?” he whispers, but you feel it in your head all the same.

You get no chance to answer. Margret’s hand is on your shoulder before you can open your mouth, and into your ear she murmurs, “It’s best if we leave now, honored friend.”

You want to protest, shake her hand off, shout your name back at the boy and ask for his, but your body feels weightless, detached from your surroundings, and you blink to find the room around you blurring at the edges.

You wake up alone in the physical world, blinking away fresh tears. The feeling of completeness is still there, though, and as you stare up at the ceiling and _focus,_ you can just make out the faint stirrings of Izanagi from somewhere far away. “Come back,” you whisper to the boy that cannot hear you. “Please …”

When the sun rises a few hours later, flooding your bedroom with light, you notice something beneath the cuff of your shirtsleeve. There, on your left wrist, in brilliant cyan-blue, is a Lover’s Mark in the shape of a swooping butterfly.

\---

Life doesn’t change too much. You weren’t sure if it _would_ because you’ve never had a soulmate before and don’t know what it’s meant to feel like, but the garden on your back hadn’t really changed anything either, so you suppose this is normal. Something that _does_ change is the way you can sense his emotions whenever they’re strong enough.

Determination comes through a lot, as does defiance. You wonder what kind of life your soulmate is living where he’s constantly on edge, constantly tense or stressed. Anxiety and anger are common as well, and you don’t like that the negative emotions are what you get most often because you can’t tell if they’re what he feels the _strongest_ or what he feels most _frequently_. Neither one is good.

You worry for him, send him thoughts of strength where you can, whisper, _“you’ll get through this, I believe in you”_ into the butterfly, and pray that it reaches him when he needs it. You don’t know him, not even his name or where he is, but you’ve _wanted_ him your whole life and now that you know he exists you already want to protect him. Sometimes there’s a flicker of something in return, but you can’t make out what it is.

There _are_ times, however, when you swear you can feel his happiness. It’s soft, more focused than the other emotions, and always at night when you’re lying in bed thinking. There’s something like longing hiding in there as well, and you know this because you’ve known forever what longing feels like. The butterfly on your wrist tingles with warmth; you dare to hope it means he’s thinking about you, too.

It’s during those witching-hour moments, when you’re alone with the memory of dark eyes and even darker curls, that you press your palm over your new Lover’s Mark and pour every ounce of yearning and curious affection from your heart into this budding bond between you. You like to imagine that the faint, giggly joy you feel afterwards is him answering you back.

But your luck always runs out.

You awake in a feverish sweat one terrible, soul-rending night in November, with after-images of torture flashing behind your eyes and fear crackling in your ribs like Izanagi’s being torn apart from the inside out. It doesn’t let up even after you blink away the nightmare, and your entire body shakes violently with adrenaline not wholly your own.

You gasp into the darkness, searching for any scrap of familiar feeling you can use as an anchor to ground the both of you on either side of the bond. All you feel is chaos, a steady stream of spectral pain. You curl in on yourself then, instinctively wrapping your hand over the butterfly and clutching until your knuckles turn white. “I’m here,” you whisper, hoping against hope that he can hear you. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here…”

There’s a feeling like something slotting between the fingers of your left hand, like someone is desperately gripping it, and you clench your fist in response as if you could hold his hand from far away and not let go. You stay that way until everything fades into a drug-like silence, sobbing against your Lover’s Mark and rocking back and forth until well after dawn.

Later, as you’re sluggishly getting ready for school with the morning news in the background, it’s announced that the leader of the infamous Phantom Thieves killed himself last night while in police custody. Somehow, with a gut-dropping surety that you cannot explain, you _know._

You don’t go to classes that day – instead, you crawl back into bed in a daze and lay there with your lips pressed against the faded butterfly, your heart freezing over inside your chest.

\---

Your Mark is silent after that.

Your hope begins to dim to embers, not yet dead but slowly dying as the months roll by. Sometimes, at night, it feels like _maybe_ there’s still something there – an echo of lonely sorrow ghosting across your soul, but it always vanishes too quickly for you to catch. No matter how fervently you plead afterwards, there is never any response.

You look for solace in denial; old “maybe’s” sit like poison in your mind and you quickly discard them when all they do is make you sick. You cling to your garden of platonic flowers, but even they bring little comfort now that you’ve had a glimpse of something deeper.

Ever observant, your Magician is the first to notice your despondence. He calls you, asks if you’re okay, doesn’t believe you when you tell him you are. He calls again later to say he’s bought a train ticket to Tokyo for spring break, and despite your hollowness the sunflowers on your back grow a little brighter at the news.

March arrives and with it comes your friend, his presence a balm to your shattered heart. You talk for hours, catching up those months spent apart and, miserably, you tell him about your once-vibrant Lover’s Mark. It’s grey now, the color all but gone in your despair, and you’re grateful when he empathizes but doesn’t ask to see.

Three days into his visit you’re… _better_ , so he drags you off to Shibuya for a change of scenery. It’s fun, hours passing with easy laughter, and you realize you’d forgotten what it felt like not to hurt.

You’re halfway to the arcade when it happens.

Out of nowhere comes a sharp, stinging pain – it lances up your arm, tracing the lines of your butterfly like lightning, and Izanagi _roars_ to life inside your soul.

_**Go.** _

You _run._

You don’t know your destination, nor how your feet know where to go; it doesn’t matter. You follow the pull inside your heart, letting Izanagi direct you left, right, straight for a block then down into an empty, open alleyway, heedless of your Magician calling out behind you.

Then Izanagi’s presence abruptly disappears.

You stumble to a halt. Heart hammering and confused, you nearly miss the sound of pounding footsteps steadily coming closer until they’re just beyond the opposite entrance to the alley. You turn as a figure rounds the corner—

and freeze.

Wide eyes stare at you from behind crooked glasses, dark beneath darker curls in a beautiful, seraphim face. _“You,”_ he whispers, taking a step towards you.

And then you’re both moving. You meet as one in a tangle of grasping desperation, tugging at each other’s wrists to reveal an identical pair of butterflies in shining, brilliant blue. Your fingers in his hair, his arms around your waist, and somewhere in the middle your lips connect in a kiss that feels and tastes like _home._

“You’re _alive,”_ you nearly sob when you pull apart, at the same time he murmurs in awe, “you’re _real.”_

Your name is Souji Seta, and you are 17 when Akira Kurusu calls you his soulmate.

**Author's Note:**

> Sunflowers (Yosuke) - adoration, loyalty, longevity  
> Hyacinth (Chie) - sincerity, sport or play, rashness  
> Amaryllis (Yukiko) - determination, beauty, love  
> Gladiolus (Kanji) - strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity  
> Pink Roses (Rise) - gentleness, grace, joy  
> Lilac (Teddie) - purity, innocence, passion  
> Iris (Naoto) - hope, courage, wisdom  
> Feesia (Nanako) - friendship, trust, innocence  
> Dahlia (Dojima) - inner strength, change, dignity 
> 
> Let’s be friends! :D Come and find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/DaemonSparks) or [tumblr](http://chroniccombustion.tumblr.com/)~


End file.
